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Tag Archives: CARE Program St. Mary Medical Center

During the 1980s, gay men watched their friends and loved ones die from a mysterious disease. At the time, being HIV+ was considered a death sentence. Angered by the lack of government funding and treatment options, LGBT activists made HIV-AIDS their cause. They became political and demanded action. Long Beach resident Michael Buitron was part of the movement. Brittany Murray – Staff Photographer.

LONG BEACH – The first time Kirstyn Chun heard the word “gay” was in the mid-1980s when her mother was reading a newspaper article about the AIDS crisis.

To say it was a negative portrayal of gay men is an understatement, said Chun, a psychologist at Cal State Long Beach, who also works with the university’s LGBT Resource Center.

“The media reflected the general public’s sentiments that lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals — but especially gay men — were carriers of disease, people to be avoided, immoral, and possibly deserving of the horrible complications that accompanied advanced AIDS due to their lifestyle choices,” she said in an email.

AIDS EPIDEMIC

Fear of the impending AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s loomed over the formative years of Generation X as much as the threat of a Russian atomic attack or the perceived crisis of Y2K.

James Mason – a long-time volunteer at the Long Beach LGBTQ Center and benefits specialist at the CARE Program at St. Mary Medical Center – was renowned for being a social butterfly and having an empathetic nature. In 2011, he was named volunteer of the year by the Center. (Photo courtesy of Chris Meraz)

LONG BEACH — James Mason — a long-time volunteer at the Long Beach LGBTQ Center and benefits specialist at the CARE Program at St. Mary Medical Center — was renowned for being a social butterfly, friends and colleagues said.

“If I was at a party and James was at a party, there would be no need to point him out to anyone,” said Michael Buitron, HIV testing project coordinator with St. Mary Medical Center, who worked with Mason four years at the hospital’s CARE Program. “By the time I would have arrived, James would have walked around the room, met everyone and got their names.”

LONG BEACH – Over 20 years ago, when I moved to Long Beach, I started working on HIV behavioral interventions; studies to reduce risk among local injection drug users, sex workers, gay and bi men, and heterosexual STD clinic patients — groups with a greater chance of becoming HIV positive. When effective treatments came about, and folks who had been at death’s door regained their health, I worked on projects that helped people return to work.

The number of newly infected persons has remained fairly stable for the past couple of decades – despite all these prevention efforts. Subsequently, the federal government shifted the focus from a behavioral to a medical model.